Pope Francis expressed his hope in the Easter Day message to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, that the Holy Spirit would “make us true peacemakers, especially for war-torn Ukraine.”
In a letter published on 24 April on the Moscow Patriarchate’s website, the Pope wrote: “May the Holy Spirit transform our hearts and make us true peacemakers, especially for war-torn Ukraine, so that the great Easter passage from death to new life in Christ may become a reality for the Ukrainian people, who long for a new dawn that will end the darkness of war.”
Vatican News, the online news portal of the Holy See, said that the Easter greeting was sent not only to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia but also to the heads of other Eastern Churches that celebrate Easter according to the Julian calendar.
Pope Francis announced last week that the Vatican had canceled plans for a June summit with Patriarch Kirill in Jerusalem. It would have been the second meeting between the two leaders since their historic encounter in Cuba in 2016.
The Pope said that his relationship with Kirill was “very good,” but “our diplomacy understood that a meeting of the two of us at this time could cause a lot of confusion.”
The two men discussed the Ukraine war during a video conference call on 16 March.